About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

Bowalley Road Rules

The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

Followers

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

A New Alliance To Reclaim Aotearoa

The Second Wave: National's connivance in the re-colonisation of Aotearoa-New Zealand has set in place the objective conditions for a powerful alliance of non-elite Maori and Pakeha.

THE EBB AND FLOW of Maori-Pakeha relations: from guilt-ridden patronage to populist recrimination; is as old as the Waitangi Treaty. Economically driven, the relationship’s ups and downs are easily mapped against the booms and busts of colonial development. On the way up Pakeha dismissed indigenous objections as inimical to progress. On the way down Maori were criticised for competing directly (and thus illegitimately) for Pakeha resources, and their needs were given the lowest possible priority. Only when the threat of concerted Maori resistance became too real to ignore did the authorities, with much show of pious benevolence, deign to intervene.

Viewed from this perspective, the political equation determining Maori-Pakeha relations has, for most of the 172 years since 6 February 1840, been relentlessly zero-sum. While productive Maori resources remained to be transferred to Pakeha settler possession, New Zealand’s race relations remained tense and recriminatory. Few people gave much thought to how the Maori-Pakeha relationship might change if New Zealand’s developmental “fortress” economy was ever opened up to the rest of the world.

How would Pakeha fare if their country was to fall victim to a second great wave of colonisation? How would Pakeha react when they realised that, just like the Nineteenth Century Maori, their most prized possessions: farms, forests, public utilities and locally-owned industries; were being taken over by foreigners? What would happen to the Pakeha ruling elites when ordinary Kiwis finally twigged that, far from defending the nation’s “treasures”, their political masters were actively conniving in their alienation?

At that point, and with that realisation, the objective basis for an unbreakable alliance between non-elite Maori and Pakeha would spring into existence. Like the Maori of the 1850s and 60s who demanded that not one more acre of Maori land be sold to a settler regime that was clearly unwilling to uphold the promises of the Treaty, Maori and Pakeha could demand that not one more state-owned asset, not one more hectare of productive farmland, be sold to overseas investors. Especially when those investors were informing the political elites that any legal reference to the Treaty must constitute a serious disincentive to off-shore participation.

That the Treaty might act as an impediment to foreign direct investment in New Zealand assets was understood by the NZ Treasury from the very outset of the neoliberal “revolution” in the mid-1980s. Indeed, had it not been for the intervention of the Maori Council and the subsequent validation of its position by the New Zealand Court of Appeal, the complete alienation of New Zealand’s key assets would almost certainly have occurred.

The now familiar and broadly accepted characterisation of the Treaty relationship as a “partnership” between Maori and Pakeha is a crucial legacy of that historic legal contest. For the best part of two decades it has tranquilised the inherent conflict between the global neoliberal project and the Court’s partnership-based model of Maori-Pakeha relations. The nascent political alliance between the two peoples has been similarly retarded by the compromise enshrined in Section Nine of the State Owned Enterprises Act.

The substantive Treaty Settlements which Section Nine’s existence encouraged the Crown to negotiate may also be seen as devices to obscure and delay the formation of a political alliance between non-elite Maori and Pakeha. Indeed, by fostering the growth of tribal elites and supplying them with the resources necessary to co-opt their most trenchant critics the Treaty Settlement process has effectively demobilised a great deal of Maori activism. At the same time the multi-million dollar financial settlements have generated considerable Pakeha resentment towards “Treaty troughers” and the Iwi “gravy train”.

The Court of Appeal’s decision on the foreshore and seabed further exacerbated Pakeha resentments and set in motion the political processes that led to the formation of the Maori Party.

The National Party under Dr Don Brash came within an ace of fanning these resentments into an open rift between the Treaty partners and thereby igniting significant racial conflict. Under his successor, John Key, National abandoned this strategy of tension in favour of the much less inflammatory strategy of transforming the Maori Party into a mouthpiece for the aspirations of tribal elites.

The result is Hone Harawira’s Mana Party. For the first time in New Zealand history a political party has been formed which takes as its starting point the natural alliance of non-elite Maori and Pakeha.

As National sloughs off the ideological camouflage of its first term, and its second term’s neoliberal programme acquires a sharper focus, the consequences of a reactivated recolonisation of New Zealand are emerging with equal clarity.

The reaction to the Crafar Farms sale is only the beginning of a long and potentially bitter struggle to reclaim Aotearoa-New Zealand for its native sons and daughters: Tangata Whenua, the People of the Land, and Tangata Tiriti, the People of the Treaty.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 7 February 2012.

9 comments:

jh
said...

The problem I have with an alliance with Maori is that they claim just about everything not "legitimately bought" under aboriginal title and (as you pointed out), that is everywhere.Also while people venerate the treaty it was signed when Maori were the majority (2000 to 70,000?) and can't in any sincerity be said to represent the interests of non Maori, unless you buy the current manufactured uber culture.

Charter Schools.Crafar Farms.Deep Sea Oil Drilling by Petrobas off the East Coast.Wharfies facing the sack as Ports Of Auckland gears up to privatise.And now no Treaty when it comes to selling off Public Assets.

New Zealand is for sale. Come to the Socialist Forum this Thursday to begin organising the fightback to defend Aotearoa. Invite friends to the Facebook event HERE.

The speed at which each of the supposed left political parties can work out the need for an alliance between dispossessed Pakeha and Maori is likely to determine whether they have any future.

While Mana is leading the way the Greens are excellent at playing both sides (inside outsiders) and are positioned to jump either way.

On the other hand Labour has been supporting our colonisation through free trade agreements, selling land to foreigners and neo liberal economic policies for a long time now.

It is doubtful whether it is capable even of recognising the scale and nature of the changes it has to make to regain any credibility; let alone take the actions needed to transform itself into a party that has something to offer the increasingly disempowered, alienated and broken - arsed population it has had such a big hand in creating.

I hope I am wrong because I have a deep distrust of the middle class Greens who totally lack any real empathy with the working class and Mana is not going to be able to do this on its own.

There is still time for Labour to become relevant again but bleating that we should all love each other on Waitangi day at the same time everything working class pakeha and Maori value is being attacked is not a very good way of going about it.